


At War With Love but Bulletproof

by paralleltonone



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:28:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paralleltonone/pseuds/paralleltonone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love wasn't supposed to be a fight, but for Liam and Zayn, the battle raged on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At War With Love but Bulletproof

**Author's Note:**

> This story was a better idea in my head than manifested into a writing. The lyrics featured are from "Titanium" by David Guetta, and "Battle Scars" by Lupe Fiasco and Guy Sebastian.

          It was peaceful at first. An alliance of sorts existed. Ignorant to the future, first glances outside golden arches were made, social networkings exchanged and well-wishings given to each with the other foreseeing great things ahead for them. With no inkling to what lied ahead, a bond was formed with a simple response from a dimple-cheeked stranger who spoke for them all. A bond that occasionally led to tight embraces with tanned fingertips brushing over baby faced cheeks and a permanent blemish on neck muscles in an effort to find a comfort that home was too far away to provide. A bond that led to slightly chiseled arms locking around a frame years behind its age in a silent outpouring of shared emotions that neither had yet to understand. A bond that led to a playful recreation of the events they’d all watched play out on WWE matches every week, a recreation that ended with lips locked longer than they should have been and in a way that they couldn’t explain. Zayn and Liam didn’t know then that every touch, every kiss, every whisper of adoration and every emotion that built second after second, minutes after minute, month after month was pushing them closer to the front line.

_**You shout it out**_  
 _ **But I can't hear a word you say**_  
 _ **I'm talking loud not saying much**_  
 _ **I'm criticized but all your bullets ricochet**_  
 _ **You shoot me down, but I get up**_

          This wasn’t the love he read about in books and heard on the radio, but if fiction had warned him, Liam wouldn’t have given his heart the way he did. He would have never let his world shift on its imaginary axis to revolve around Zayn and only Zayn, never let himself long for Zayn’s touch like his life depended on it, never let Zayn’s presence be the only comfort he knew when he felt like coming apart.

          This wasn’t the love he read about in books and heard on the radio, but if fiction had warned him, Liam wouldn’t have allowed his heart to let Zayn fall ahead of everything and everyone he knew, to be okay with reciprocated shoves and broken toes and sprained wrists, to cowering and tension at just the thought of him getting close. If Liam knew that loving Zayn would bring a barrage of phantasmal bullets, he wouldn’t have given his heart the way he did.

_**I wish I never looked, I wish I never touched** _  
_**I wish that I could stop loving you so much** _  
_**I wish you weren't the best, the best I ever had** _  
_**I wish that the good outweighed the bad** _  
_**Cause it'll never be over, until you tell me it's over** _

          It’d been a bad idea from the very start, and if he could turn back time, Zayn would have saw to it that things went differently. He would have never let himself get addicted to Liam’s warmth next to him when he slept, to phone calls when he felt at his worst and being soothed by Liam's voice, to the way he felt when Liam's body collided with his and how he could never get enough of that or of him.

          It’d been a bad idea from the very start, and if he could turn back time, Zayn would have never let it get to mornings with empty beds and no more embraces, abrupt hang ups when the screaming got too much, sex so angry he silently wished for the pain to stop. If he’d known he would have been readying the battlefield for war, Zayn would have never let himself fall in love with Liam.

_**Stone-hard, machine gun** _  
_**Fired at the ones who run** _  
_**Stone-hard as bulletproof glass** _

          Secrets struggled to keep and showing out to make them believable.

           Zayn waited until Liam looked away, until his gaze left the curly-haired brunette seated in the restaurant booth next to him and shifted his way. He wanted until he had Liam’s attention to turn in his seat and press fingers to the jaw of the blonde he’d brought along, turning her head for their lips to meet. It was a game, sometimes, to Zayn and he liked making Liam jealous. He liked seeing Liam get in a tizzy when he unexpectedly showed up with her at his side, when had to watch her attach herself to what Liam considered his, when Zayn’s focus made her the center of his world even just for a while. It was another blow, another shot fired to his emotions. 

          He never broke, though. He found it in him to block all of the pain he felt, even when he could feel his blood boiling at the mere sight of Zayn and her. If there was one person in the world he despised, it was her. Still sometimes Liam felt sorry for Perrie because she believed Zayn cared about her, she believed she was above all the women he was rumored to be with, and what was worse, she believed those rumors and set it in her mind to be okay with it because to her, Zayn loved her. He wondered how she would feel if she knew there weren’t any women: just Liam.

          Sometimes, he felt the same about the woman next to him because she didn’t think that way. Danielle never thought the worst of Liam or his actions. She believed she fully had his heart and no one else would take that from her. But she started to feel his growing lack of attachment, the fact that his heart was elsewhere and not with her. Zayn called that day at the restaurant the best day ever because after that, he never saw Danielle again. Danielle let Liam go when his secret spoke volumes on its own and she knew he wasn’t hers. That he never had been.

_**Hoping wounds heal, but it never does**_  
 _ **That's because you're at war with love**_

           “I love you’s” and “I hate you’s” all at once.

“I wish I never met you…” Zayn spoke to Liam as he stared at him from across the hotel room, back pressed against the wooden door, face red and knuckles swollen. “I fucking hate you so much.” 

“Well, leave, Zayn! Get out!” Liam lifted his head from its resting spot in his hands, turning to Zayn as he stood from the bed, the darkening abrasion beneath his eye visible. “I don’t need you here. I don’t want you here.”

His softening expression was proof that Zayn had been hit right to his core and he pushed away from the door to go to the other man, “You do need me,” he whispered as his tears started to fall down his tanned cheeks, his hands coming up to cup Liam’s face in his hands. “You need me just like I need you…I need you.”

Memories of name calling, punches thrown, injuries given faded from Liam as tear-filled hazel and brown set on one another, “I need you too,” Liam whimpered as his lips brushed Zayn’s, “I love you so much…”

          Zayn should have left that night, and the night after or even a week later when he was holding a freezing pack of plastic and gel to a mark not much unlike the last beneath Liam’s eye while Liam held an identical block to his knuckle. He should have left, but there he was with his lips pressing kisses over Liam’s temple and speaking promises of never again. But there was always an again.

_**I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose** _  
_**Fire away, fire away** _  
_**Ricochet, you take your aim** _  
_**Fire away, fire away** _

          Nevers screamed until voices were hoarse.

“You must be aiming for another black eye? Come any closer to me and I’ll make it happen, Liam!” Zayn shouted. “I will fuck you up so bad.” 

“Zayn!”

          Niall was stunned, but no one was more so than the man the comment had been tossed to, the one who’d lied until he was blue in the face that his and Zayn’s arguments weren’t violent, that even with Zayn’s temper, neither of them hit one another. But there was Zayn putting it out there in front of those same men Liam had told that lie to time and time again. There was Zayn threatening to do those same actions he apologized for every time and that Liam fought futilely to keep from reciprocating. There was Zayn taking aim and shooting at Liam the one thing about what they had that got under his skin in the worst way, and there was Liam breaking.

“I hate you! I hope you die!”

          Two sets of hands were the only thing holding Liam back from charging the few doors down in the hotel hallway straight into the dark-haired man his rage was directed at, and at the blond protecting him. The owner of one of those sets of hands turned then, grabbing Liam’s shoulders and trying to shove him back into the room behind them once he felt things were getting too far out of hand.

“Come on, Li. Just, come on, and relax.”

          Louis’ words weren’t anything he’d never said before, but like all those times before, they were enough to coax Liam away from the situation.

Plopping down to the floor beside the door as the other two men entered with him, Liam finally let his tears fall and he spoke with cracking words and strained sounds, “I’m through with him. I don’t even want to hear him speak again or look at him. I don’t want him to touch me ever again. I just want him to die or disappear.”

“You don’t mean that, Liam,” Harry squatted down so that they were face-to-face, reaching out to place a comforting hand to Liam’s. “Just relax...”

“I mean it. I never want to see him again.” Liam’s broken voice could barely be heard by Louis or Harry, the sound waning from the exhaustion brought upon it. “Never…”

_**And I'm at the point of breaking** _  
**_And it's impossible to shake it_ **  
**_See, you hoped the wound heals, but it never does_ **  
**_That's cause you're at war with love_ **

          Forevers whispered until it seemed they could speak nothing else.

“I love you…” 

           Zayn’s palm brushed over Liam’s cheek with the other man’s words, his hazel eyes still locked on Liam’s even in the dark, the moonlight the only illumination in the room. Liam moved his hand across Zayn’s side, situating it over the blackened heart on his bare hip as he leaned in to let his forehead press to Zayn’s.

          It was almost as if moments like this gave way to some unspoken treaty, a pact of some kind that kept them civil. It was almost as if moments like this eradicated any of the negative that may have existed between them. There was quiet, and peace, and there was love.

          It was moments like this that Zayn loved the most. It was moments like this that reminded Zayn why he stayed, why he didn’t stop, why he couldn’t help but to love Liam. In spite of the secrecy, the tension, the lies, the fighting, the mind games, he couldn't let him go. Didn't want to let him go.

“I love you, Liam. I love you forever…until the day I die.”

**_You shoot me down_ **

Louis was never silent about his fears for Liam and Zayn, “Liam, I am so scared that you two are going to kill each other one day.”

**_These battle scars, don't look like they're fading_ **

“Is it really worth it, Zayn?” Harry couldn’t handle their fights sometimes, but he didn’t take it as badly as Niall who became a sobbing mess after the dust had settled and all had calmed.

Tearfully, he bit his lip as he’d questioned, “This isn’t what love is supposed to be like, Zayn.”

**_But I won't fall_ **  
**_Don't look like they're ever going away_ **  
**_I am titanium_ **  
**_They ain't never gonna change_ **

           Every battle had its end: 1648. 1815. 1918. 1945. 1991. 2011.

“Zayn, just hang on. It’ll be okay.”

“Liam…”

“Just relax, Zayn. Liam is...he'll be fine...help is coming.”

          Louis was at the bleeding boy's side giving words meant to calm, but all Zayn had in his head were flashes of that night.

_“I hate you!”_. Shouting. Silver. _“I’m sorry…”_. Blood. _“I love you so much…”_. Flashing lights. Sirens. Tears. Silence.

          Every battle had its end: 2012.


End file.
